One of the most exciting AFC Championship games of all time! A 37-yard bomb from O'Donnell to Ernie Mills (who makes a fantastic sideline catch) sets up Bam Morris' winning 1-yard TD plunge just as it looks as though the game has slipped away from the Steelers. Gritty Jim Harbaugh moves within striking distance in the waning moments only to watch helplessly as his "Hail Mary" bounces in and out of the lap of Colt receiver Aaron Beasley in the end zone on the game's final play. Also includes Greg Lloyd's infamous "F-ing Super Bowl" post-game quote on national TV (score: Greg Lloyd, 1 -- TV censor button guy, 0).

At halftime, we get coaching adjustments from Mike Ditka and Joe Gibbs, but it's what isn't here that made this halftime show unique.

We hear Greg Gumbel throw to commercial by saying that they'll preview the Packers-Cowboys NFC Championship Game next, and so they do......with help from the Fox NFL Sunday crew! There are a lot of jokes back and forth, particularly between Greg and Terry Bradshaw, who were former partners at CBS on The NFL Today. At the very end of the segment, Greg says that Pat Summerall and John Madden just may call part of the second half of the AFC game (which, of course, didn't happen), but this may have been the most entertaining network studio segment I've ever seen.

The funny part was, the NBC guys were supposed to appear at halftime of the NFC game to recap the AFC game, but they never did. Once the whole plan got out a few days later, Fox claimed technical difficulties, but it's just as likely that they'd gotten what they wanted from NBC (free publicity for what was then still an upstart in the NFL business) and had no intention of letting the NBC crew on their air in the first place. ESPN tried a similar thing years later using the main analysts from all the networks as part of a roundtable, but it never caught on, and we don't see anything like this today, even on NFL Network.

Before the game, we get analysis from Ditka, Gibbs, and Joe Montana, plus a report on Jimmy Johnson, who had recently been hired by the Dolphins. Apparently five different teams had been after him: the Dolphins, Bucs, Lions, Giants, and Browns (who were due to move to Baltimore, but may still have been doing administrative business in Cleveland for the moment). How differently the Steelers/Ravens rivalry might have developed with Jimmy on the Baltimore side!

1) I was at both AFC title games in 1994-1995. Notice the dead silence in the stadium as the ball comes down on the final play. Having left so disappointed the year before, I don't know what I would've done had Bailey just closed his arms a split second earlier. I was waaaay to into these things as a trainwrecked and overemotional teenager and might have jumped off something in my emotional state. I kid. Sort of.

OR

2) What if the ref had signaled TD? There was no instant replay or challenges in the NFL during these years.

3) Mills' catch to the 1 would not have counted in today's NFL. It was perfectly fine, nobody questioned it after the game, the Colts didn't violently flap their arms incomplete and Marchibroda didn't run down the side judge to protest. It was a good catch to everybody who saw it. But the NFL wanted it a different way for some reason over the last few years.

4) Mills and Willie Williams with two sensational and somewhat forgotten plays to keep the Steelers in it. I also STILL haven't forgiven Chris Oldham for not pulling in that interception that would've avoided the Hail Mary play to begin with! I wanted to celebrate in the stands for a little bit at least.

5) We would've had an easier time with the Chiefs even though it would've been in KC. Same goes in 1997. Those Marty-coached KC teams were frauds. We just weren't careful enough with what we wished for as Steelers fans in wanting to host these AFC title games at Three Rivers.

6) Imagine if Twitter and sites like Deadspin existed in 1996 with reaction to Lloyd's f-bomb and Jim Gray's derpy reaction afterwards. Thankfully, we were only subjected to maybe a Phil Mushnick contrived outrage column in TV Guide before SB XXX.

And lastly, both the 94-95 AFC games were played on unseasonably (and annoyingly) warm days in Pittsburgh. Then a few days after both games, we got hit with huge snow storms. I would've loved to see a dome team and a warm-weather team like the Chargers handle that.

(12-25-2017, 08:53 AM)RJW Wrote: 3) Mills' catch to the 1 would not have counted in today's NFL. It was perfectly fine, nobody questioned it after the game, the Colts didn't violently flap their arms incomplete and Marchibroda didn't run down the side judge to protest. It was a good catch to everybody who saw it. But the NFL wanted it a different way for some reason over the last few years.

Truth. And further proof that the ridiculous "survive the ground" rule needs to change.

WE KNOW A CATCH WHEN WE SEE IT. It's not that f-ing hard.

Ernie Mills caught that pass. And Jessie James caught it even more convincingly last week. And on the first drive of the '08 AFC Championship, Santonio Holmes caught that pass. And on and on and on.

Honestly, since they're going to make boneheaded errors either way, I'd rather see them come down on the side the catch rather than ruling against it.